Scarlett

When his leg starts shaking under the table, all I can think of is not again, not again, and he looks up from his cell phone and says it:

"My girlfriend...she hates you."

I'd like to tell his girlfriend that when her boyfriend touches my ass, it doesn't make her less attractive.  It's her emotional bitchiness and guilt trips that cause him to ignore her calls, and her clever conquests of insatiable sexcapades that cause him to forget how to communicate with her on a verbal level.  I should know.  I am queen of talking with my body.

"I have to tell her that I'm having drinks with my mom right now because she doesn't want me seeing you. And if she found out I was at your apartment earlier..."  He doesn't finish his sentence. Just continues to move his leg up and down, and when I point out this nervous dance he says, "It's my dad's gift to me."

My mind wanders to a time last week when I spent an afternoon with another male friend playing pool and eating lunch.  By the time we got to dessert we were asking to see each other's underwear.  Actually, I asked him to show me his.  It was a whole "I'll show you mine if you show me yours first" kind of deal.  I don't give that stuff away for free.  I proceeded to describe the make and feel of my panties until he couldn't sit still, and was impulsively murmuring questions, which I couldn't really hear because my ego was cackling hysterically.  I heard something about "curvature" and "sexy," and as I idly touched his pant leg, he inadvertently proclaimed he could no longer go to class in five minutes.  Guess how I knew.

"It doesn't matter if you have one boyfriend or ten."  I blink and look up.  My friend is still talking, looking at me as though he expects more of a reaction.  His phone buzzes with another text message.  That's five in the last five minutes.  I ask if he thinks that's excessive.  He shrugs and says, "It's not like she's calling me."  

I sip my raspberry ice tea and marvel at the irony of it all.  If his girlfriend only knew that the woman who has the greatest chance of making her boyfriend leave her is herself, she wouldn't hate me so much.  

"She likes it when we're in bed and I mutter to her in a foreign language," he says to me.  I tell him, "Of course she does."

Then I look down at my cell phone sitting in my purse.  I wonder what my boyfriend is doing.


3.09.07